Once lost in time, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle concept from 1987 is finally set to see the light of day. Based on an idea from creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin will take the characters in an entirely new direction.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is an upcoming five-issue comic book miniseries from IDW Publishing, crafted by TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman with co-writer Tom Waltz and inker Andy Kuhn. The story will take the turtles to 2040 and is described by Eastman as a “heartfelt love poem to all the TMNT universes of the past [that] offers up an intense look at one possible future.”
“About ten years ago, I re-discovered a 20-page outline for a TMNT story that Peter and I wrote together back in 1987,” Eastman said in a statement about the new series. “The story was set 30 years in the future, which, as written then, was set in 2017. Reading through it again, I drifted back to a very different time in TMNT history — back when it was all about the comics, mostly just Peter and I writing and drawing the issues, pre-everything the world would soon come to know about these characters that we’d created and called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
“Nine years ago, I was invited back into the TMNT comic universe, via my friends at IDW Publishing,” Eastman continues. “Aside from the original run with my friend and co-creator Peter Laird, working on the IDW TMNT universe has been the best time I have had with the Turtles for a very, VERY long time. A little over a year ago, as the ongoing series headed towards issue one hundred, I showed a rough revised and updated version of the story outline (now set in the year 2040) to Tom Waltz, who equally fell in love with the possibilities of it. The Last Ronin is a heartfelt love poem to all the TMNT universes of the past, and offers up an intense look at one possible future — firmly based on and adapted from an original thirty-three year-old idea, from the original creators. Trust me — Tom, Andy, and I have just started on a two-hundred page journey… and it IS going to be one HELL of a ride…”
Check out the cover and a panel from the upcoming comic miniseries here…
Each issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin will run 48 pages, and is set for launch later this year.
